Roommates and lovers (who are sometimes both) are cooped up together these days, occasionally annoyed with one another. I include a song which may describe something like that by the Venetian singer-songwriter Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). She was perhaps the most prolific composer of songs at that time and place. Many of them remain unpublished. We are […]
Read MoreImagine a world without the songs of Gabriel Fauré if you can. I can’t. He published mélodies over the course of 60 years, and leading up to the twentieth century, they became miracles of austere but sensuous beauty. They seem made for older people to understand. I don’t recall the first time I heard the […]
Read MoreI once said that one of my favorite singers was Fred Astaire. Steve Blier muttered, “that explains a lot”. You’ll have to ask him what it explained, but it might have been that I like things simple, unaffected, and with good diction. In the 1936 film Swing Time, Fred pretends that he can’t dance, so Ginger will spend […]
Read MoreThis week I’ll be sharing a new song each day that features NYFOS artists making music in their homes. The world’s gone crazy This was Song of the Day just five months ago, but this performance of the song was released just a little more than five days ago. A song can mean something so […]
Read MoreThis week I’ll be sharing a new song each day that features NYFOS artists making music in their homes. “This song is beautiful, and a little rough” I met Andrew Owens singing an interesting project: an operatic prequel to Carmina Burana. The Book Collector, by Stella Sung and Ernest Hilbert, a story of an evil […]
Read MoreThis week I’ll be sharing a new song each day that features NYFOS artists making music in their homes. Are you going to play ‘Art Teacher’? Today is a song written and performed by Rufus Wainwright. While Rufus isn’t a NYFOS artist, there are fewer than six degrees of separation between him and NYFOS. In […]
Read MoreThis week I’ll be sharing a new song each day that features NYFOS artists making music in their homes. What’s in a name? From their Chicago apartment Hugh Russell and Craig Terry have been entertaining us and keeping us sane on a daily basis. From their vast selection of quarantine serenades, I chose this one, […]
Read MoreThis week I’ll be sharing a new song each day that features NYFOS artists making music in their homes. We can hear each other pass, but we’re far apart Right now for every artist who is inspired to create and reach out there is at least one who has lost all motivation or who has […]
Read MoreThis week, I’ll be sharing a new song each day to remind you (and myself) that how we use this time at home is as varied and limitless as our collective imagination. There’s at least one song, if not hundreds, for everything we’re experiencing in this singular moment, and it wasn’t easy to pick five! […]
Read MoreThis week, I’ll be sharing a new song each day to remind you (and myself) that how we use this time at home is as varied and limitless as our collective imagination. There’s at least one song, if not hundreds, for everything we’re experiencing in this singular moment, and it wasn’t easy to pick five! […]
Read More